FIVE ALBANIAN-AMERICAN GROUPS PROTEST AGAINST CNN¹S BRANDING OF ALBANIANS
³KINGPINS OF U.S. CRIME²

Five Albanian-American groups today sent a joint letter to the international
news network CNN protesting their recent depiction of Albanians as ³kingpins
of U.S. crime² in a news piece dealing with organized crime in the United
States.

The CNN article, entitled ³FBI: Albanian mobsters 'new Mafia'², was
published on CNN¹s international website on August 19, 2004. It sparked
immediate reaction among Albanian-Americans, a group of whom decided that
they would not stand idly while their entire community was being defamed by
poor piece of journalism published by a powerful news outlet.

In their letter to CNN, the Albanian-American groups called the article
³entirely one-sided, inaccurate, and outright derogatory,² referring to its
unsupported and carelessly worded assertions and completely unbalanced
representation of the Albanian-American community.

Furthermore, the letter stated that one of the assertions in the article
³effectively qualifies all Albanian-Americans and recent Albanian immigrants
to the United States as criminals,² while the rest of the article
unjustifiably referred to Albanians as possible ³kingpins of U.S. crime²
without providing any evidence in support of such a seriously disparaging
charge.

What was especially shocking was the suggestion that the Albanian-American
community may harbor ³militant Muslims² who may potentially be involved in
the support of terrorism. No evidence was provided to substantiate the
highly tendentious claim. The letter to CNN retorted: ³As a community that
has been directly affected by the horrific events of September 11, 2001,
with respectable and hard-working members of our community having perished
in the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center, with
Albanian-Americans proudly serving in the New York Police and Fire
Departments, with thousands of us lending our assistance and support to
victims, and as a proud, hard-working component of the civic fabric of New
York City, we are appalled by any insinuation that we, as a community,
provide any kind of support to any type of terrorist activity.²

The letter was signed by the Alliance of Albanian-American Professionals
(AAAP), the National Albanian-American Council (NAAC), the Albanian-American
Women¹s Organization (AAWO), the Albanian-American Student Organization
(AASO), and the Kosova Action Network (KAN). This was the first time that
such a broad coalition stepped up in a joint initiative to counter negative
media representations of the Albanian-American community.